Many telecommunication companies now offer a voicemail service. In the current art, when a subscriber places a call from a telephone number associated with a voicemail mailbox account, that subscriber may be audibly notified of the existence of waiting voicemail (or other types of multimedia messages). The audible notification may be via a “stutter dial tone” or frequency-shift-keyed (FSK) tones. Alternatively, there are “off-hook” devices, which may be coupled to a telephone, or incorporated within a telephone, that allow such notification to be detected by a subscriber visually in addition to (or instead of) audibly. This type of notification is also applicable to other types of messages existing for the subscriber on the central server. Notification can also be provided by an intelligent indication device (such as a viewable computer screen display) that shows the quantity and status of each type of message that awaits retrieval by the subscriber.
There are currently multiple systems that allow forwarding the various types of multimedia messages to a subscriber's email address. The email service used for storage of the forwarded messages can be provided by the same system that forwards the messages, or by a third party's email server.
In the current art, a major inconvenience related to checking multimedia messages from an email-reading application is that a retrieved message doesn't change status in the central storage device after being retrieved by the customer.
In current voicemail systems, a voicemail message is not marked as retrieved on the voicemail server where the original voicemail is stored when a user retrieves that voicemail via a remote email client (to which the voicemail message has been forwarded). Therefore, subscriber notification remains active on the voicemail server even though the user has already heard the message. For instance, a Message Waiting Indicator (MWI) and/or (when the subscriber goes off-hook on the phone associated with that voicemail address) a stutter dial tone would mislead the user by indicating that a new voicemail still exists.
In the current art, solutions provide for synchronization between a centralized message storage server and a remote email storage server. This synchronization is accomplished between the two servers to insure that messages retrieved via email are identified on the centralized storage server as having been retrieved. This synchronization approach has the disadvantage that it is not available as a feature on all centralized message storage systems. It also has the disadvantage that, if one of the servers has a communication link failure, the synchronization may not occur until after that failure is corrected. During a communications failure, before the synchronization can take place, the user may access their voicemail account and discover that retrieved messages are still identified as not having been retrieved.
Another key disadvantage of the server-to-server synchronization approach is that most service providers do not allow access to their server systems by remote systems not entirely under the control of the provider. This is not only for the sake of security, but also to eliminate the complexity of maintaining a system that is vulnerable to uncontrollable external errors and failures. Very few service providers are willing to risk the integrity of their stored messages and data (and the overall throughput of their systems) by allowing other companies to access their system for the purpose of controlling the status of waiting messages.
Another solution seen in the current art is the integration of both email and multimedia message storage into one unified storage system. This approach has several disadvantages. First, for a user to get a new account on a unified message server (that combines voicemail and email in the same server), the user has to change their existing email address. This is both expensive and inconvenient, and may not be practical in many cases. Notification of each known correspondent (and any anticipated correspondents) is time-consuming and tedious. Often email addresses have been published in many forms, including printed and distributed advertising. Reprinting and redistributing advertising materials is an expense, and can be confusing to potential customers. There is always the likelihood that older distributed materials will persist, and when discovered will cause potential customers to send messages to a discontinued address. This puts at risk new business opportunities for the company or person who had to change their email address in order to utilize the feature.
It is also a disadvantage that, if a company has all of its employees using one type of email server, migration of each of the subscriber accounts to a new unified message storage system is a very complex process. It involves disruption of email service for a period of time, as well as re-education of each employee. Additionally, the unified message storage system may be incompatible with other systems already in use by the company, its users and their correspondents.
It also can be seen that existing solutions force a message to be marked as old, when in reality the user may not want the status of the message to be changed, or may want it to be changed differently. For example, the most common reaction to voicemail is its removal after processing. It is inconvenient for the user to retain too many voicemail messages. In addition, the central storage system or its operators typically limit the total quantity of stored (retained) voicemail messages.
Thus, when an existing system only marks the stored voicemail message as “old”, but doesn't allow the user to select a “delete voicemail” option, the user must then, inconveniently, take a separate action to directly contact the central storage system and perform additional processing of the messages marked as “old”.
The user may accomplish this by dialing into their voicemail server using a phone, and then pressing a sequence of telephone buttons to accomplish deletion of the old messages. Alternately, the user may activate an Internet connection directly with the centralized storage system, and then interact with the system's user interface to delete the old emails. In either case, taking these extra steps represents a significant inconvenience to the user. This is especially true with some voicemail servers that require a user to once again listen to the entire voicemail message prior to allowing the user to delete the message from storage.
From the description of the current art, it can be seen that what is needed is a method for automatically updating the status of retrieved multimedia (or other types of) messages in a centralized unified message storage system when the message is opened via email. It can also be seen that a method is needed for accomplishing this without requiring the user to switch to a new unified message server, thus avoiding the requirement to change existing email addresses of users.
Further, it can be seen that this method would best be accomplished using a direct communication between the email-retrieval client and the unified message storage system, without the intervention of specialized services provided by a separate server.
Finally, it can be seen that a solution is needed that does not require the user to modify or replace their existing email client and/or web browser.